By 2030, the tourism industry will need to fill almost a million jobs

According to a McKinsey & Company report, the Spanish tourism sector needs to fill approximately one million positions by 2030.

Spain's main source of jobs will still come from tourism.

According to a report by McKinsey & Company, the Spanish tourism sector needs to fill approximately one million positions by 2030. Competition for talent will intensify, and the new vocational training law may play a crucial role.

The sector is in a "complicated" state because of the pandemic, when "high levels of layoffs and sick leave caused a flight of personnel to other sectors," according to a consulting firm. However, the recovery is real now, as shown by the affiliation numbers.

In particular, there were 2.6 million Social Security affiliations in tourism in June of last year. This is the second highest number in the history of the series, after August 2019.

"The strong recovery of Spain's tourism industry needs more workers," Fernando Valdés, Spain's Secretary of State for Tourism, told Efe.

McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, says that between now and 2030, the sector will need to fill 900,000 jobs. Also, it seems like the conditions of these jobs have gotten better.

According to data collected by the Secretary of State for Tourism, eight out of every ten contracts in the hospitality industry were permanent in May and June of 2018. This was a higher rate than in May and June of 2019, when only six out of ten contracts were permanent.

Valdés also points out that just two years after the "worst" tourism crisis in history, more jobs are being made than before the crisis.

Javier Caballero, a tourism expert and partner at McKinsey, says that the problem for companies in the sector is a "lack of labour or qualified staff to cover all this demand."

In this way, the Secretary of State says that the high demand for people with training in tourism and the competition to get good workers are signs of an expanding labour market.

The McKinsey study says that digitalization is a big part of this. It says that digitalization is one of the levers that can change how companies find, train, manage, and keep employees.

As drivers that can be used to solve the problem of a lack of workers, other things to think about are flexibility, upgrading of knowledge, and alignment with environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) criteria.

But the educational offer is without a doubt the most important thing.

In its analysis, the McKinsey consulting firm said, "There is no comprehensive educational strategy for tourism in Spain." The company's partner knows that companies need to offer jobs that fit what the younger generations want.

Caballero told Efe that what is needed are internships and professional training so that "not everything goes through getting a degree in tourism" because "it won't be so useful."

Even though about 50,000 people get training in tourism-related careers right now, the lack of workers in the sector means that a comprehensive education strategy is needed.

In this way, the Vocational Training law that was passed last March "will bring a disruptive element to the labour market," said Valdés. "Students will be able to have a deeper immersion in the company," he added, referring to the tourism industry.

The Secretary of State thinks that the sector's ability to meet its human resource needs in the coming years will depend on a number of factors, including salary conditions, flexibility, and access to housing.

In fact, the fact that there aren't enough places to rent is one of the reasons why it's hard for companies to hire people. In places like the Balearic Islands, some companies offer housing to attract workers.